


Parfait

by Zoi no miko (zoi_no_miko)



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Pastries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoi_no_miko/pseuds/Zoi%20no%20miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's perfect," Éponine says as she looks at the beautifully decorated opera cake, even knowing that it isn't for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parfait

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avarry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avarry/gifts).



"Good morning, Monsieur Marius!" Éponine's voice rings out as she slips in the back door of the little pâtisserie, half an hour before opening time. She hangs her purse from a hook by the door, trading her pea coat for an apron and tying her hair back away from her face. The spring air had been chilly with a threat of rain, but inside the pâtisserie the air is warm and moist and sweet with the aroma of baking.

Marius has just finished packaging a pan of cut opera cakes into elegant foil wrappers. He turns and pulls a face. "Must you always stand on ceremony, 'Ponine? I thought we were friends!"

"Of course, which is why I will always give the best pâtissier in Paris the respect he is due." It feels good, to tease Marius. They are friends, have been friends since Éponine handed him her application to work in his shop, which was approximately thirty seconds before he stole her heart completely. And perhaps she had hoped for more when she'd first started flirting, but since Marius's heart is already occupied, obliviously so, friendship was how things would be. Still, it feels good to let his name and the title roll off her tongue. Like a term of endearment, like there's a closeness between them that couldn't quite be the same with anyone else.

She presses a kiss of greeting to Marius's cheek and enjoys his brief embrace despite the smudge of chocolate his fingers leave on her arm. "The opera cakes look perfect."

"Do they?" Marius turns back to the cakes with a sudden self consciousness, and Éponine glances down to see that he's decorated the top of one beautifully with chocolate piping, a large, round heart surrounded by curlicues.

Éponine bites down a twist of emotion that was once jealousy, then anger, but has settled now into a kind of wistful sadness. "They're perfect," she repeats, reassuring him. "That one is beautiful. Is it for her?"

Éponine can't bring herself to say the girl's name: the pretty blonde with the posh wardrobe and the expensive perfume who stops in every afternoon, like clockwork, to buy pastries on her way to meet her father for tea. Cosette, she'd learned a few weeks ago, after Marius had finally worked up the nerve to ask her, and it's all she's heard since.

Marius's expression is dreamy, adoring. "I wrote my cell number on a piece of parchment under the opera cake. I'm going to slip it into her bag with her order. Do you think she'll call me?"

"She'd be a fool not to," Éponine's smile feels forced, but she smiles still. "Don't worry."

"I can't help it," Marius replies with a sigh, starting to transfer the rest of the cakes to a tray to take out to the front. "Meeting the love of my life in a pâtisserie? It seems too beautiful to be real."

It's hard to think about anything other than that pretty little opera cake, harder still to remain cheerful. But she has to, for the sake of the shop, the customers, for Marius. For how could she begrudge her friend the happiness she sees shining behind his eyes?

She makes sure she is out of the building during Cosette's usual visit. It makes Marius happy to have an excuse to tend the till, she knows. To talk to her. Nothing has changed in him when Éponine returns, though when he hugs her before leaving her to close up the shop, it seems that his smile is a little warmer, his eyes a little brighter. The back door closes behind him, and Éponine can't help but feel her heart crumble.

When the shop is closed and cleaned she finds it, the tiny golden pastry box tucked carefully into the very top of her purse. She pulls the ribbon with trembling fingers and takes the beautifully decorated cake out of its wrapping, pulling the folded square of parchment off the bottom.

_'Dear 'Ponine,'_ she reads, _'The most beautiful love in my life is already real.'_

His name is signed in a swirl with a heart, and as she pulls out her phone to dial the numbers he's printed underneath. She tucks the opera cake into the fridge.

Perfect, she thinks, and the tremble of emotion in her heart has been lifted to joy.

**Author's Note:**

> You caught me with the Eponine feels!! Hope you enjoy this bit of fluff. :)


End file.
